The night the blood moon rose, Ariana Thorn was done waiting.
The old den pulsed with restless energy — rogues sharpening blades, checking traps, whispering about the girl who'd once been Kael's castoff and now planned to rip his kingdom apart. Every candle flickered like a promise of what would burn by dawn.
Ariana stood in the center of it all, hands braced on the scarred table where Kade's crude map lay spread. Trails of ink sketched old pack routes, watch posts, and the iron fences that ringed the heart of Kael's lands.
Lucian leaned beside her, shoulder brushing hers. She felt him — the steady heat of him — grounding her as she traced a claw over Kael's symbol marked at the center. A crown. A lie.
"This is suicide," Kade rumbled from across the table, arms crossed over his massive chest. "You want to storm Kael's vault with twenty rogues and a half-blood witch?"
Ariana's eyes flicked up, sharp and unyielding. "We're not storming anything. We're slipping in, cutting the throat of his supply lines, and slipping out."
Lucian smirked, wolfish and wicked. "And taking back what's ours."
Ariana tapped the map. "He's hoarding relics — pieces of the old royal bloodline. Proof of who has the true claim to the realm's throne. If we have them, the other packs have to listen."
Kade grunted. "Or they'll just hunt you harder."
Ariana bared her teeth. "Let them try."
She didn't wait for more arguments. She pushed off the table, snatched her cloak, and felt Lucian fall in step behind her. They slipped into the cold night while the rogues murmured prayers to old gods who hadn't listened in centuries.
---
The moon was a wound in the sky — huge, red, dripping its light like fresh blood. The forest glowed sickly under it, every branch painted in shades of murder and promise.
Ariana moved like a phantom, her wolf prowling just under her skin. She heard every heartbeat, smelled the fear tangled in Lucian's grin, the raw hunger that always crackled between them. It made her pulse skip, made her feel like she could tear the world open with her bare hands.
They reached the outer fence just before midnight. Iron bars laced with old runes — Kael's idea of security. Lucian pressed his palm to the metal, felt the faint buzz of magic.
"Wards are weak here," he murmured. "He didn't expect rogues to come this close."
Ariana slipped a blade from her boot, steel kissed with silver. She turned it once, catching the blood moon's glow.
"Good. Let's show him his mistake."
Lucian's grin was sharp enough to cut. "After you, Thorn."
---
They crept through the narrow break in the fence, every sense tuned to the shadows. Ariana smelled the sentries before she saw them — two young wolves, boys who hadn't yet earned the scars they bragged about by the fire.
Lucian leaned in, breath brushing her ear. "Soft throats."
She shivered at the promise in his voice. "No noise."
They struck like ghosts. Ariana's claws slipped under the first boy's chin, cutting off his gasp before it was born. Lucian caught the other, a hand over his mouth, blade sliding between ribs. They lowered the bodies to the grass — not out of mercy, but because the pack's dogs would smell blood soon enough.
"Still with me?" Lucian asked, his eyes gold and bright in the dark.
Ariana licked a smear of blood from her knuckle. "Try to keep up."
---
The vault sat beneath Kael's old temple — a ruin swallowed by roots and half-choked with brambles. It should have felt sacred once; now it smelled of rust and stale power. Ariana's mark prickled as they descended the cracked steps. Her wolf pressed at the edges of her mind, hungry and restless.
Lucian slipped ahead, testing each step for hidden traps. Ariana followed, her pulse steady. She could feel the relics down there — fragments of a truth Kael had buried with every lie he fed their pack.
They reached the vault door — a thick slab of black stone, old runes etched deep. Ariana pressed her palm to the cold surface. Her wolf recoiled at the echo that crawled under her skin.
"Step back," Lucian warned.
She didn't. "It knows me."
A silver glow leaked from her mark — the Thorn coiling inside her blood. The runes flickered, then went dark. The door shuddered once, twice — then cracked open on a hiss of stale air.
Lucian stared at her, a flicker of awe breaking through his mask. "You scare the hell out of me sometimes."
She smiled. "Good."
---
Inside, the vault was a tomb. Shelves lined with ancient scrolls, chests heavy with gold that smelled like centuries of broken oaths. And there — on a stone pedestal — a bundle wrapped in faded velvet. Ariana stepped forward, her breath catching when her fingers brushed the cloth.
She unwrapped it — a crown of twisted iron and bone. The old mark of the royal line Kael had slaughtered to claim his throne.
Lucian's hand covered hers. "Is it what you thought?"
Ariana traced the jagged iron, the scraps of power still humming through it. "It's proof. He'll kill every rogue between here and the border to get it back."
Lucian leaned in, voice rough. "Then we'll make sure he never touches it."
---
They almost made it out clean.
A low growl echoed through the ruin — not from Lucian, not from Ariana. A shape peeled itself from the shadows — Kael's second-in-command, Darius. Taller than Lucian, broader than any wolf had a right to be. His eyes gleamed like oil under the blood moon.
"Look at you," Darius sneered. "The Thorn and the rogue prince. Thieves in the king's tomb."
Ariana tucked the crown into her cloak, her claws sliding free. "Step aside, Darius."
He laughed, a sound that grated like rusted metal. "He wants you alive, Thorn. But him?" He jerked his chin at Lucian. "His head on a spike."
Lucian bared his fangs. "Try it."
Darius lunged. The clash of wolves was all teeth and bone and blood — a blur of claws and snarls that rattled the vault walls. Ariana dove under Darius's sweeping arm, raked her claws across his ribs. He roared, backhanding her into a stone column. Pain flared white behind her eyes, but her wolf rose with it, hungry for his throat.
Lucian was faster. He slammed Darius into the wall, claws tearing flesh from bone. Darius howled — a brutal, ugly sound — and Ariana lunged, fangs sinking deep into his throat. Warm blood gushed across her tongue. She didn't stop until he went limp, until the scent of death replaced the stink of Kael's poison.
She staggered back, chest heaving. Lucian caught her, his hands tight on her arms. "Easy. Breathe."
She looked at him — really looked — and saw what they were now: not prey, not traitors, but something wild and new. Two wolves the pack couldn't collar. The king couldn't cage.
A snort of laughter bubbled up, half hysteria, half triumph. Lucian barked a sharp laugh in return, his forehead pressed to hers.
"Every time I think I've seen the worst you can do—"
She kissed him, hard and fast, tasting blood and freedom all at once.
---
They dragged Darius's body into the vault and set the runes alight with stolen witchfire. By the time they slipped back through the broken fence, smoke and ash curled up to greet the blood moon — a signal to every pack that the Thorn had found her crown, and she wasn't giving it back.
---
They made camp at the river's edge, far enough from the ruin that Kael's dogs wouldn't find them before dawn. Ariana sat with the crown in her lap, fingers tracing its jagged edges. Lucian sprawled beside her, one arm draped over her thigh, his face tucked into the curve of her hip like he'd finally let himself rest.
"You're going to make them kneel, aren't you?" he murmured, voice muffled by her cloak.
Ariana's claws stroked through his hair, untangling bits of dried blood. "Every last one."
He huffed a tired laugh. "Queen Thorn. Has a nice bite to it."
She leaned down, pressed her lips to his temple. "And you? My rogue king?"
Lucian cracked one eye open, mischief gleaming through the exhaustion. "You'll owe me a crown to match."
She grinned, all wolf and teeth and promise. "We'll forge it in Kael's bones."
He didn't flinch. He only pulled her closer, his laughter echoing with the river's rush and the blood moon's cold glow above them.
In the distance, a lone wolf howled — not Kael's. Not Ariana's. A sign that the packs were stirring, that the realm's old order smelled its own death.
And Ariana Thorn — the rejected mate, the rogue prince's love — smiled into the dark, ready to break the world open one bloody promise at a time.